Tag Archives: autumn

85. The real New Year

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The start of September has always felt more like the real New Year. What is the 1st of January other than a dark miserable arbitrary day in the wake of the bacchanal of Christmas, everyone over-fed, over-watered, over-socialised, with not a penny to their names after splurging on presents and outfits and goodness knows what else, and nothing to look forward to but two or more months of cold and dark. New Year’s resolutions at that time of year are born more out of guilt than optimism.

How different is September. The start of autumn, the season of plenty, of apples and wheat, of (in Ireland) bringing home the turf to heat the house in winter. It’s back to school time too. Whether you have children or not, the return to school at this time of year is so ingrained in our culture. All but a few know exactly what it’s like to go back to school. It’s all about newness – a new class, new books, new teachers, maybe a new uniform. It’s a time for moving up and moving on, from one year or level to the next. This is the time of year when many teenagers move away from home for the first time.

This year, like all others, early September feels like the start of a new year. Lily and Katie have (of their own volition) spent the past two days declutterring and deep cleaning their bedroom. Lily has decided to try her hand at selling some clothes she no longer wears on Vinted. She’s sold three items today alone!

With school about to start in a few days, the girls and I have been talking about eating more healthily for ourselves and the planet and so I’m planning some very different meals over the coming weeks.

At this time of year, the weather is still warm enough and the days long enough to put New Year’s resolutions and promises made to ourselves into action. There’s a welcome return to routine after the more free-form and chaotic summer holidays – especially for people with school-age kids.

So, if you’re thinking of making positive changes in your life, don’t hold off until dreary January. Embrace the possibilities for change at this, the real, New Year.

69. Autumn has begun

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Like someone flicked a switch, autumn came today. It wasn’t just one thing. It was the blackberries that Lily gathered all day from the hedges along the perimeter of Mammy’s garden. It was the southwesterly wind that blew orange and yellow leaves from the trees, leaves that swirled in through the open kitchen door and around our feet. It was the hasty retreat indoors, dinner in hand, when the wind blew the kale off our plates and sent the butter flittering across the patio table. It was the drizzle that set in, late afternoon, the sky grey, visibility reduced. It was the early sunset, no longer a summer sunset, in a sky that the clouds and soft rain transformed into a Turner painting. It was the slight chill in the air, the need for socks and a jumper. It was the photo a friend sent of her niece’s first day back at school. The time for flying south like barnacle geese is almost upon us. I will miss the dramatic transformation that autumn brings to Ireland.

Autumn

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Autumn is in the air. Not in the middle of the day, when the sun beats down from a cloudless sky and the temperature hovers in the mid-30s (˚C). It doesn’t feel like autumn then. But early in the morning when I take the dog for her walk, there’s a discernible change in the air, a frisson of a new season, a hint of something different. It invigorates me and makes my skin tingle.

These mornings it’s cooler, the sun is lower in the sky and there’s a noticeable smell as autumn finds a chink in summer’s armour and stealthily, but inevitably, seeps through. The evenings are undergoing change too, the sky filling with massive billowy clouds in late afternoon, white, grey, ominously black. If we don’t get rain here – and often we don’t – we see it falling elsewhere, sheets of grey connecting sky to land, sweeping across the hills somewhere away in the distance. When it does rain here, it falls in huge fat drops, in showers that are fast, sudden, drenching, and over almost as soon as they’ve begun, filling the air with petrichor*, that heady fragrance of rain after a dry spell.

I get giddy with the turn of the seasons. Each offers new opportunities – seasonal foods to cook and eat, seasonal changes in the landscape to enjoy and wonder at, seasonal festivals and celebrations. I like the change of wardrobe that comes with the change of seasons. After a long hot summer of shorts, t-shirts, dresses and sandals, I’m looking forward to jeans, jumpers, boots and jackets.

Autumn, much more than spring or even New Year, has a feeling of renewal about it. Perhaps it’s because I have spent 37 of my 46 years in formal education, either as a student or an educator and because our year now revolves around my daughters’ school year. Autumn is a time for new books, new pens and pencils, fresh empty virginal notebooks, and the endless possibilities they present. It is a time for stepping up an academic level and the inherent possibilities for learning new things, making new discoveries, and growing intellectually and emotionally.

As I step out these mornings to take Lady on long walks through the countryside, the cool fragrant autumn air that fills my lungs also fills my mind with possibilities for how the remainder of the year will unfold, for jobs to be done and activities to participate in, for writing projects to start or complete, for classes to take and places to visit.

What’s my favourite season? The truth is, I don’t have one. I love them all. My favourite times of year are those in-between season times, when one gets sensory hints of the season to come. Those are the best times of year of all.

*Thank you, Jan, for teaching me a new word this week!